The Wish

               The first thing you mortals should know is that there are A LOT of what you might call gods. Hundred of thousands of us all look down on and influencing the worlds you live in, using all manner of different powers and talents to direct everything from which direction a breeze blows to how long a particular galaxy will exist for. And before you get all god-fearing and repentant you should know that there are rules on how all this is done and who gets to do what; it’s not just some random lord of the flies (and apes and octopi and filthraxers) up here. Every Being has their certain domain, exerts their power according to the Overall Plan, and responds to the wishes and prayers presented for their specific talents.

               That last one is where I come in. My official job title is “request management and sorting officer,” which I suppose could be likened to a human post-office worker. When wishes are made by mortal creatures, they come through my office to be sent off to the proper Being to deal with them. There’s a whole host of different ways wishes can be made: shooting stars, prayers, wishing wells, crunthfrdip trees, just to name a few. Each method has its own merits and can affect which Beings hear which desires. Now, not every wish made gets passed on, or even gets to my office in the first place. Just saying “I wish…” without any other procedure or condition does absolutely nothing. And wishes or prayers that are impossible for physics as you understand it, like raising the dead, or that would alter the course of the Overall Plan, like universal peace, are immediately disregarded. Occasionally, a very bored Being will fulfill one of these as a so-called “miracle” but those are a great rarity. Once the method, nature, and intended audience of the wish are analyzed it is sent to the proper department to be handled by the correct Being.

               The other day I was manning my sorting post when a very interesting request came in. The first odd thing about it was its method of delivery. This request got to my office by means of an offering, in this case a severely undercooked bird and some string of high sentimental value to the sender. This is a very archaic wish-making procedure that hasn’t been used in quite a long time. This in itself caused a bit of a problem. You see, because certain Beings only take requests submitted by a certain method if said method falls out of practice than said Being falls out of use. Most often they retire from wish granting and move into some other role. And if you think humans get cranky when they’re called out of retirement then an all-powerful Being in that position would make you cry. Protocol for these kinds of requests is a little grey as well. Since the wish isn’t against the Overall Plan it should not be immediately discarded, but without an assigned being to hear it, the final destination of the wish is left up to the discretion of the sorter. In this case, I decided to place it aside until after my shift and see if there was anything to be done with it later.

               The rest of that shift was pretty uneventful. Standard, unremarkable wishes came and went in the usual way. Zeus had this “hilarious joke” he was dying to tell at lunch, which, big surprise, was a dick joke. After my shift ended, I gathered up my personal stuff from my desk and remembered the request I had set aside earlier. I took the request back with me and read through it on my own. The request was sent by a Toby and was very vague in its nature. In its entirety it read “Help my Lizzie feel better.” That was another complication. Without details this would mean more work for whomever did eventually get it, which I still had to figure out. I sat there mulling it over for some time, trying to decide who should handle this vague wish that may or may not require a good bit of extra research and paperwork. Some Beings may not want to put in that work and end up granting some twisted version of the request’s intention. Others may put too much effort into the details and not actually grant the wish in time to be of use to the wish-maker. After much deliberation I finally settled on the proper granter; myself. I hadn’t directly interfered with the mortal world in some time and thought this might be a good chance to stretch my powers again.

               The first thing to do about this wish was to find out who Lizzie was and what was wrong with her. Luckily, the Department of Mindset and Well-being was likely to have both of those answers. I called them up with the description of the wish-maker, Toby, as it had come in with the request and asked them to identify the Lizzie in question. From his mental file, they told me this had to refer to Elizabeth Preston, Toby’s roommate. I then asked them to pull Ms. Preston’s file and tell me what was ailing her. I waited a moment as they glossed over the file, only to have them tell me there was nothing in particular that was wrong. Lizzie was a 25-year-old black woman, born in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and living in Chicago, Illinois. She had no major injuries or illnesses at the time and no prior conditions that were causing her pain. I asked about future ailments from the Overall Plan, but they told me there were none scheduled that Toby could know about. Perplexed, I asked them to send me a copy of the file to review in more depth.

               Once I received the file, I tried to look through every detail I could to see what the problem was. Lizzie’s medical section was all but flawless. Sure, she got sick once in a while, as all mortals do, but had no chronic or even past major illnesses that were causing her grief. She didn’t smoke or drink to excess, she wasn’t pregnant or home to any other parasites, and even in her future the worst thing she would face would be a mild case of breast cancer that she was set to overcome anyway. From a health and physical perspective, this woman was just about perfect. So what could Toby be talking about when he asked that she “feel better?”

               Just then, a thought occurred to me that might shed some light on the matter; if Lizzie was doing fine medically, what if she needed to feel better emotionally? I flipped through her file to the mental section and began to read. Overall, Lizzie was again in pretty good shape. She didn’t have any psychological illnesses like schizophrenia or depression and hadn’t suffered any major traumas yet. However, at this particular time in her life she was feeling an inordinate amount of stress. It turns out that she had moved to Chicago only three human weeks prior and was without a job at the moment. She was paying off a car, the rent, school bills, and personal expenses, dipping into her savings further and further with each day. To top it all off, the next mortal day she had a job interview with a big company that she was terrified for, since several previous interviews had gone poorly in the preceding days. All of these factors swirled in her head and were causing her stress and anguish greater than anything she had dealt with before.

               This was it. This stress had to be what Toby was noticing and wishing to fix. I knew the easy solution would be to dump a bunch of human money in Lizzie’s lap, but that would violate about a dozen different protocols. However, there was definitely something I could do. The next day dawned for the mortals and, having said goodbye to Toby, Lizzie headed out for her interview. From a comfy spot in my home I extended my power of influence down to the mortal realm and put in my work during the interview. Wish-granting and influence rules forbade me from simply deciding the outcome of the interview for the employer, but I was allowed to direct both her questions and Lizzie’s answers to strongly impact what decision would be made. Throughout the process I directed the questions to be one’s that played to Lizzie’s strength, while at the same time reminding Lizzie of those strengths directly from the information in her file. I had to fight Lizzie’s nerves a tad, but both hers and the interviewer’s emotions were relatively easy to swing into positive territory. By the end, the employer was extremely impressed and able to offer Lizzie the job on the spot.

               Having accepted the position, Lizzie went home feeling elated. I watched as her file data changed and a great deal of the stress left her mental state. When she got home, she picked Toby up in a great big hug and told his about what had happened. He very quickly picked up on her new well-being and matched it with is own enthusiasm. The funny thing is, Toby will probably never know what part his wish played in helping Lizzie’s situation. Then again, neither do most wish-making mortals. But it was certainly one request I will never forget. After all, how often does one get to grant the wishes of a cat?